They Dyed My Dress for the Dance. I Left the Group of Five novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Water Pressure

We didn't talk on the walk back to Hale Street.

I kept my hands in my pockets so he wouldn't see them shake.

The laundromat had closed for the night, and the street was dark and quiet.

Upstairs, Rhett locked the door behind us and leaned against it.

"You were incredible."

"I called him a name in front of three hundred people."

"He called himself one."

I laughed, and then it turned into something else.

I put my hand over my mouth.

I'd held it together on the stage, in the theater, in the atrium, in the stall at the dance.

Now my shoulders started to go.

Rhett crossed the room without a word and pulled me against his chest.

I cried into his shirt, hard and ugly, until the front was wet.

He didn't say it was okay.

He rubbed my back, slow and steady.

"Dad used to tell me something," I said, when I could talk. "When I was little and everyone was mean about the colors. He'd say, the world is a gray photograph. Don't look for the paint. Look for the edges."

"Smart man."

"He died when I was twelve."

"I'm sorry."

"I never cry about him. I cried about Lance. That's so stupid."

"It isn't."

"Tonight I'm not going to cry about anybody else."

I pulled back and looked at his face.

"I want a shower," I said. "And I want you in it."

His eyebrows went up.

"You've got a sense of timing."

"I just did a lot of crying. I'm gross."

"You're not."

"Come on."

The bathroom was the size of a closet, with a narrow glass stall and a showerhead that sputtered when it started.

I turned it on and let it run until the steam rose.

I pulled off my hoodie, then my shirt, then everything else.

I felt Rhett watching me from the doorway, and I didn't hurry.

"Your turn," I said.

He took his clothes off slowly, with his eyes on me, and I saw how much he wanted me.

I stepped under the water and he followed, and the little stall filled up with his body.

The water was hot and loud on the glass.

He soaped his hands and ran them up my arms, over my shoulders, down my back, with a care that made my throat ache.

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